Stability and Change in Identity Formation Through Adolescence
Levels of commitment remained stable throughout the entire period of adolescence, for both boys and girls. Previous studies either found small increases (Meeus et al.
1999) or small decreases (Luyckx et al.
2006a,
2008). Thus, if previous studies and the present study are taken together, the best conclusion with regard to commitment is that there appear to be no meaningful changes across time. As rank-order stability of commitment was quite high in both early to middle and middle to late adolescent boys and girls, this mean-level stability should be interpreted as a normative trend (e.g., Roberts and DelVecchio
2000) that applied to a vast majority of adolescents. Thus, results for commitment provide support for Van Hoof’s (
1999) concept of stability in identity formation. With regard to gender differences in commitment, we found that rank-order stability of boys was higher than for girls in early to middle adolescence. Further gender differences were not found for commitment.
Additionally, our results demonstrated that adolescents’ current commitments were increasingly more explored as they grew older, as we found increases for in-depth exploration in middle to late adolescent boys and girls. Similar findings have been obtained in previous studies (Luyckx et al.
2006a,
2008). Mean levels of in-depth exploration were stable in early to middle adolescent boys and girls. Similar to our results concerning commitment, rank-order stability did not increase with age in adolescence. No gender differences in rank-order stability of in-depth exploration were found, but mean-levels of in-depth exploration were somewhat higher for girls than for boys throughout adolescence. In-depth exploration involves reflection on one’s current commitments. Since girls have been shown to exhibit higher levels of self-reflection in general (Burwell and Shirk
2007), it is perhaps not too surprising that they exhibit higher levels of reflection on current commitments. Levels of rank-order stability for in-depth exploration were quite high, which indicates that mean-level changes applied to a majority of individuals. Thus, middle to late adolescence is a period where most boys and girls start to explore their commitments in an increasingly active manner.
For reconsideration, we found profound gender differences. Throughout adolescence, girls displayed lower levels of reconsideration when compared to boys. These gender differences can be explained from an evolutionary point-of-view. Compared to boys, girls have a stronger preference to hold on to existing social bonds (Geary et al.
2003). High levels of reconsideration in the interpersonal domain would threaten social bonds directly, and reconsideration in the educational domain would threaten these bonds indirectly since much of an adolescents’ social network is embedded in their school. As such, high levels of reconsideration could be particularly maladaptive for girls and less so for boys. This could be the reason why girls exhibit lower levels of reconsideration when compared to boys.
Besides gender differences in levels of reconsideration, there were also gender differences in change rates. Boys exhibited mean-level decreases in early to middle adolescence, whereas girls did not exhibit any significant changes throughout adolescence. Boys’ decreases were only small in early adolescence, but became increasingly larger towards middle adolescence. These findings suggest that early to middle adolescence is a period where boys become increasingly more certain about their commitments. In middle to late adolescence, boys first display a small increase in reconsideration, but this increase is followed by a decrease. Despite this temporary increase for boys, their mean levels of reconsideration in middle to late adolescence remained below their mean levels in early adolescence. As there were no age-related changes in the relatively high levels of rank-order stability we found in early to middle adolescent boys and girls, the developmental patterns we found should be perceived as normative developmental trends (e.g., Roberts and DelVecchio
2000). The normativity of the slight, temporary, increase in reconsideration for boys is underscored by the fact that it coincides with a normative transition, as adolescents advance from high school to university when they are approximately 16–18 years old. They end up in a new school environment and meet new people. Their friends might go to a different university, which is likely to affect friendships. As a result, adolescents might need to re-evaluate their commitments to their old friends, and look for new ones. Entering a new form of education is also likely to affect the educational identity domain. Adolescents need to find out what their new education means for them. Hence, they need to explore and find out whether their choice for a certain major as well as a certain university suites their needs. For this purpose, they might need to compare their current education with several possible alternatives. Thus, if the developmental context of 16–18 years old Dutch adolescents is taken into account, an increase in reconsideration should not necessarily be considered maladaptive. Our findings therefore underscore the importance of considering the context in which identity formation occurs (e.g., Bosma and Kunnen
2008). These results further demonstrate that our reconsideration scale is sensitive to changes in identity formation during normative transitions (i.e., the transition from high school to university), and thereby underscore the validity and importance of this relatively new identity dimension. What is unclear, however, is why the temporary increase in reconsideration only occurs for boys, especially since a previous study (Luyckx et al.
2008) demonstrated a similar curvilinear pattern for an identity dimension closely related to reconsideration (i.e., exploration in breadth) in a female college sample. It could be argued that the girls in the current study already possessed a more mature identity (indicated by higher levels of in-depth exploration and lower levels of reconsideration) by middle adolescence, when compared to boys. Girls’ more mature identities should be indicative of a heightened sense of sameness and continuity across social contexts (Erikson
1972,
1974). As a result, they could perceive less of a need to adapt their identities in a new social context (i.e., university) and do not start to doubt their commitments when entering universities.
Across dimensions, levels of rank-order stability were quite high in both early to middle and middle to late adolescence. These findings indicate that individual differences in identity dimensions are already set to a large extent in early to middle adolescence, and do not become more set as adolescents grow older. We did find some gender differences in early to middle adolescence, as boys exhibited significantly higher levels of rank-order stability for commitment and reconsideration, when compared to girls. All the same, our results with regard to the three separate identity dimensions indicate that identity formation is characterized by stable individual differences across dimensions and stable mean levels of commitment, but with progressive mean-level changes for in-depth exploration in both boys and girls, and in reconsideration for boys. Thus, the current study indicates that identity commitments are increasingly better explored by both boys and girls (indicated by increases for in-depth exploration), while certainty about commitments is already high for girls in early adolescence, and increases for boys throughout adolescence (indicated by decreases in reconsideration). Taken together, our findings are not necessarily indicative of identity status changes, but they do suggest that adolescents move towards an achieved identity status. Therefore, our results support Waterman’s (
1982,
1999) concept of progressive change. Although the consistent overall pattern indicating progressive changes suggests that the changes we found are much more than just fluctuations in identity formation, the average change rate for the various identity dimensions was still rather small. As such, van Hoof’s (
1999) concept of stability also receives some support in the current study.
We found that profiles including all three identity dimensions distinguished in the current study (i.e., commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration) were already quite stable for early to middle adolescent girls and did not become more stable for them in middle to late adolescence. Boys, on the other hand, had a less stable identity profile than girls in early to middle adolescence, but since their identity profile became much more stable in middle to late adolescence, they caught up with girls again. We found a similar pattern with regard to mean-level changes in reconsideration (i.e., boys initially had higher levels of reconsideration than girls, but displayed stronger decreases). Thus, similar to previous studies (Kroger
1997; Meeus et al.
1999; Waterman
1982,
1993,
1999), we found rather small overall gender differences in identity formation. However, there are gender differences in the timing of change. More specifically, girls seem to be ahead on boys in identity formation in early to middle adolescence, with boys catching up again in middle to late adolescence. Thus, girls seem to mature earlier with regard to identity formation than boys. Evidence for similar gender differences in the timing of developmental changes have not only been previously reported for identity formation (Kroger
1997), but also in the field of adolescent personality research (Klimstra in press). Gender differences in timing of maturation on psychological variables could be caused by similar gender differences in biological maturation, as girls are typically ahead on boys in pubertal timing (e.g., Petersen et al.
1988) and neurological development (Giedd et al.
1999). Future studies could investigate whether biological processes are indeed the cause of gender differences in the timing of adolescent identity formation.
Taken together, our findings reflect progressive changes in identity formation that apply to a majority of adolescents (as evidenced by relatively high levels of rank-order stability). The fact that the changes we found occurred in the relatively new identity dimensions in-depth exploration and reconsideration fits into our conceptualization of identity formation in adolescence. We propose that identity formation in adolescence is not specifically characterized by longitudinal increases in commitments themselves, but by increasing reflection on and certainty about commitments.
When taken as a whole, our results contribute to the debate on the timing of identity formation. Our results indicate that changes in identity formation take place both in early to middle adolescence, as predicted by Meeus (
1996), and in middle to late adolescence as predicted by Marcia (
1980) and Waterman (
1982,
1993). Thus, the amount of change is not different in early to middle adolescence and middle to late adolescence, but differences between identity formation in early to middle adolescence and middle to late adolescence are related to specific dimensions. Findings for reconsideration suggested that early to middle adolescence is characterized by small increases in certainty about commitment for boys, but findings for in-depth exploration clearly indicated that middle to late adolescence is the period where commitments become more actively explored, for both boys and girls. Therefore, our results fit within the dual-cycle model proposed by Luyckx et al. (
2006a). In their model, the first cycle, referred to as “the commitment formation cycle”, represents the formation of stable commitments. We found some evidence for such a process in our data, reflected by mean-level decreases in reconsideration in early to middle adolescent boys. The second cycle, “the commitment evaluation cycle”, involves actively thinking and evaluating present commitments. Evidence for this cycle is clearly represented in our data by increasing mean levels of in-depth exploration in middle to late adolescent boys and girls.
Some limitations of the current study should be noted. In this study, we focused on long-term changes. Identity formation is assumed to be characterized by inner conflicts or crises (Erikson
1972,
1974) that are hard to detect in studies with one-year intervals between measurements. In addition, the three-dimension model employed in the current study offers a dynamic conceptualization of identity formation (Crocetti et al.
2008b). However, with large intervals between measurement occasions the exact dynamics of identity development cannot be captured adequately (Luyckx et al.
2006a; Lichtwarck-Aschoff et al.
2008). To obtain a detailed perspective on the dynamics of identity formation, future studies should include more frequent measurements.
In this study of growth and stability in identity formation, our focus was on change in three identity dimensions. To disentangle the causes of inter-individual differences in identity formation, future studies should also address long-term associations of identity dimensions or statuses with other factors that have been shown to be related in cross-sectional studies, or should be theoretically related. For example, Luyckx et al. (
2006c) already found strong evidence for a longitudinal interplay between personality and identity, but merely assessed late adolescent women. In another longitudinal study, Kroger and Haslett (
1988) demonstrated that identity formation predicted attachment style. However, they only employed a small sample. Further research revealed cross-sectional links between identity dimensions on the one hand, and psychosocial problems (Crocetti et al.
2008b) and the separation-individuation process (Meeus et al.
2005) on the other hand. Taken together, the longitudinal associations between identity formation and factors like personality, separation-individuation (e.g., attachment), and psychosocial problems are not well-established. Future studies should aim to examine the relations between identity formation and these factors more thoroughly.
The current study also showed the importance of considering gender in identity formation, as girls exhibited more stability and maturity at the early stages of identity formation with boys catching up in late adolescence. Our findings regarding temporary increases in reconsideration for boys during the transition from high school to university already showed that it is also important to consider the developmental context in which identity formation occurs (Bosma and Kunnen
2008). Since these temporary increases in reconsideration only occurred for boys, our findings reveal that not only the main-effects of gender and context exert an influence on identity formation. In line with Kroger’s recommendations (Kroger
1997), our results point towards the importance of studying the effect of gender by context interactions. Thus, future studies should assess the effects of gender, contextual factors, and the interactions of gender by context on identity formation whenever it is feasible.
In conclusion, the current study reveals that identity formation is described by both stability and progressive changes. No age-related changes were found with regard to rank-order stability of identity dimensions and mean levels of commitment. There was, however, evidence for progressive change, especially for boys. Boys gained an increasingly more stable identity profile (evidenced by increases in profile similarity), displayed a decreasing tendency for reconsideration throughout adolescence, and revealed increases in in-depth exploration in middle to late adolescence. Girls also exhibited progressive changes, as they displayed strong increases for in-depth exploration. Taken together, our findings indicate that identity formation is characterized by progressive changes in dealing with commitments, rather than by changes in commitments themselves. Therefore, our findings demonstrate the merits of a three-dimension approach to identity formation, with an emphasis on the relatively new identity dimensions of in-depth exploration and reconsideration.